Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1887-05-14

smile on his face is reflection of his
own vanity" John Wesley turned all
England upside down with Christian re-
| form, and yet the punsters were after
| him, and the meanest Jokes in England
were perpetrated about John Wesley.
| What is true of the pulpit is true of the
| pew; it is true of the street, it is true of
the shop and the store. All who will
live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer
| persecution.
And l set it down as the worst sign in
all your Christian experience if you are,
any of you, at peace with all the world.
The religion of Christ is war. 1t is a
challenge to 1.-The world, the flesh and the
devil :" and if you will buckle on the
whole armor of God, you will find great
host disputing your path between this
and Heaven. But what are you to do
when you are assaulted and slandered
and abused, as l suppose nearly all of
you have been in your life? Go out and
hunt up the slanderer? o, no, silly man
While you are explaining away false
hood in one place, fifty people will just
have heard of it in other places.
Icounsel you to another course. While
you are not to omit any opportunity of set
ting yourselves right, l want to tell you
this morning of One who had the hardest
things said about Him, whose sobriety
was disputed, whose mission was secuted,
whose companionship was denounced,
who was pursued as babe and spit upon
as a man, who was howled at after He
was dead. will have you go unto Him
with your bruised SOUL in some humble,
child-prayer, saying: II see Thy wounds
wounds of head, wounds of feet,
wounds of heart. Now, look at my
wounds and see what | have suffered,
and through what battles l am going,
and l entreat Thee, by those wounds of
Thine, sympathize with me-" And He
will sympathize, and He will help. Go
and tell Jesus
Again: l commend the behavior of
the disciples to all who may have been
bereaved. How many in CARDS of mourn
ing If you could stand at this point
where l am standing and look off upon
this audience, how many signals of sor-
row you would behold! God has made
His own way of taking apart family
We must get out of the way for coming
generations. We must get off the stage
that others may come on, and for this
reason there is long procession reach
ing down all the time into the valley of
shadows.
This emigration from time into
eternity is so vast an enterprise that
we cannot understand it. Every hour we
hear the clang of the sepulchral gate.
The sod must be broken. The ground
must be plowed for resurrection har-
vest. Eternity must be peopled. The
dust must press our eyelids. at is APP
pointed unto all men once to die" This
emigration from time into eternity keeps
three-fourths of the families of the earth
in desolation. The air is rent with fare
wells, and the black-tasseled vehicles of
death rumble through every street.
The body of the child that was folded
so closely to the mothers heart is put
away in the cold and the darkness. The
laughter freezes to the girls lip, and the
rose scatters. The boy in the harvest field
of Shuman says: "My head my head p
and they carry him home to die on the lap
tragedies of woe struck into the pallor
of the cheek. Orphanage cries in vain
for father and mother. Oh, the grave is
cruel With teeth of stone, it clutches
for its prey. Between the closing gates
of the sepulchre, our hearts are mangled
and crushed. Is there any earthly
solacep None. We come to the obse-
quies, we sit with the grief-stricken, we
talk pathetically to their soul but soon
the obsequies have passed, the carriages
have left us at the door, the friends who
stayed for a few days are gone, and the
heart sits in desolation listening for the
little feet that will never again patter
through the hall, or looking for the en-
trance of those who will never come
again-sighing into the darkness-evel
and anon coming across some book OF
garment, or little shoe or picture, that
arouses former association, almost kill
ing the heart.
Long days and nights of suffering thai
wear out the spirit, and expunge tho
bright lines 'of life, and give haggard
ness to the face, and draw the flesh tight
down over the cheek-bone, and draw
dark lines under the sunken eye, and the
hand is tremulous, and the voice is husky
and uncertain, and the grief is wearing
grinding, accommodating, exhausting.
Now, what are such to do? Are they
merely to look up into brazen and un
plying Heaven? Are they to walk @
blasted heath unfed of stream, unshel
tered by overarching tree? Has God
turned us out on the barren common tC
die? Oh, no, no, mol He has not. He
comes with sympathy and kindness and
love. He understands all our grief. He
sees the height, and the depth, and the
length, and the breadth of it. He is the
only one that can rully sympathize. &c
and tell Jesus. Sometimes when We
have trouble we go to our friends and We
explain it, and they try to sympathize
but they do not understand it. They
cannot understand it. But Christ sees
all over it, and all through it. He moi
only counts the tears and records the
groans, but before the tears started, be
fore the groans began, Christ saw tho
Utmost hiding place of your sorrow, and
He takes it, and He weighs it, and He
measures it, and He pities it with an all
absorbing pity. Bone of our bone
Flesh of our flesh. Heart of our heart
Sorrow of our sorrow.
AS long as He remembers Lazarus
grave He will stand by you in the Gene
terry. AS long as He remembers His own
heart-break He will stand by you in the
laceration of your affections. When He
forgets the footsore way, the sleepless
nights, the weary body, the exhausted
mind, the awful cross, the solemn grave
then He will forget you, but not until
then.
Often when we were in trouble we
sent for our friends; but they were far
away, they could not get to us. We
wrote to them: Come right away" or
telegraphed: "Take the next train. y